RESIL MOJARES AND THE CRISIS OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE IN THE PHILIPPINES

Amado Anthony III Gracia Mendoza

Abstract

After its heyday from the 1950s until the early 1970s, a crisis in the field of comparative literature was declared present by its practitioners during the 1980s. The effects of the perceived crisis were felt not only during conferences but also through brutal budget cuts and the downsizing of comparative literature departments across the world.   In the decades that followed, various attempts to address the crisis were made by critics such as Franco Moretti, Pascale Casanova, Alexander Beecroft, among many others. As a result, methods and concepts such as “distant reading,” “evolutionary literary history,” “literary ecologies,” and “world republic of letters” easily became the theoretical and methodological bulwark of numerous comparative literature departments against the perceived effects of the crisis.  Incidentally, in his seminal Origins and Rise of the Filipino Novel, Resil Mojares deployed similar ideas and concepts, however, to different ends.  This paper, then, is first an attempt to analyze Mojares’ deployment of the said concepts and methods vis-à-vis to that of Beecroft, Casanova, and Moretti’s. Finally, the paper also seeks to identify and elaborate on specific implications and possibilities made visible by Mojares’ methodological interventions in the field and practice of comparative literature in the Philippines.

Keywords: Crisis, comparative literature, literary history, Mojares, methodological intervention, Philippines.

Cite as: Mendoza III, A.A.G. (2018). Resil Mojares and the crisis of comparative literature in the Philippines. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 3(2), 80-91. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol3iss2pp80-91

Full Text:

PDF

References

Arac, J. (2011). Impure worlds: The institution of literature in the age of novel. New York: Fordham University Press.

Beecroft, A. (2015). An ecology of world literature: from present day to antiquity. London: Verso.

Bennett, T. (2010). Sociology, aesthetics, expertise. New Literary History, 41(2), 253-276.

Blanco, J. (2009). Frontier constitutions: Christianity and colonial empire in the nineteenth-century Philippines. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.

Carroll, J. (2011). Reading human nature: Literary Darwinism in theory and practice. New York: SUNY Press.

Casanova, P. (2004). The world republic of letters. Massachussets: Harvard University Press.

Deyto, J. (2018). The year of permanent midnight. Pasig, Manila: Examination Related Literatures Unedited Essay.

Dworkin, C. (2003). Reading the illegible. Illinois: Northwestern University Press.

Ferris, D. (2011). Why compare? in a companion to comparative literature. Edited by Ali Behdad and Dominic Thomas. London: Blackwell Publishing.

Garcellano, E. (2001). Knife’s edge: Selected essays. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.

Garcia, J. N. (2004). Postcolonialism and Filipino poetics: Essays and critiques. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.

Guillermo, R. (2009). Translation and revolution: A study of Jose Rizal’s Guillermo Tell. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.

Hau, C. (2014). The Chinese question: Ethinicity, nation, and region in and beyond the Philippines. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.

Hau, C. (2004). On the subject of the nation: Filipino writings from the margins, 1981-2004. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.

Hau, C. (2000). Necessary fictions: Philippine literature and the nation, 1946-1980. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.

Holbo, J. (2007). Framing theory’s empire. Indiana: Parlor Press.

Kadir, D. (2011). Memos from the besieged city: Lifelines for cultural sustainability. California: Stanford University Press.

Kramnick, J. (2011). Against literary Darwinism. Critical Inquiry, 37(2), 315-347.

Legasto, P. (2004). Philippine post-colonial studies: Essays on language and literature. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.

Love, H. (2010). Close but not deep: Literary ethics and the descriptive turn. New Literary History, 41(2), 371-391.

Mojares, R. (1983). Origins and rise of the Filipino novel: A genric study of the novel until 1940. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.

Moretti, F. (2013). Distant reading. London: Verso.

Pasanek, B. (2015). Metaphors of mind: An eigtheenth-century dictionary. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

Pison, R. (2010). Dangerous liasons: Sexing the nation in novels by Philippine women (1993-2006). Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.

Tadiar, N. (2009). Things fall away: Philippine historical experience and the makings of globalization. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol3iss2pp80-91

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.